


Dissonant verse

by skyholdherbalist



Series: Smite the ashes [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Blood Magic, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, Film Noir, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Magical Artifacts, Modern Kirkwall (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 12:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14618373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyholdherbalist/pseuds/skyholdherbalist
Summary: Kirkwall Noir.  Rylen is on the trail of a strange delivery, but to what end?





	Dissonant verse

**Author's Note:**

> The Templars are a mysterious association, a yakuza-style order who use dangerous methods to fight magic, and are marked by certain distinctive tattoos. There’s an underground war in Kirkwall: Templars against Wardens, while the Chantry sits aloft, and the regular Joes and Janes on the street suffer.
> 
> Rylen left the Templars when they started “barking at the moon”—and nobody leaves the Templars without pain. He’s out for himself now. He’ll help you, for a price. Don’t get him wrong, he’s not a good man, even if his intentions may be. But what do they say about the road to the Void?...

The sun beat the water like an old rug, and the sea pitched its dirt onto the docks. 

The water in Kirkwall was always filthy, filthiest here. At other piers, in other cities, the sea rested cool and green, its vastness an invitation, its waves a caress. 

But it lied to you, as the sea does. I grew up on a river. I don’t trust the sea. 

I was following a kid. He ferried a strange delivery: a golden book. Engravings and jewels encrusted on the cover flashed against the sun, bright enough to blind. He wasn’t keeping it a secret. He held it tight against his chest, and half-ran, stumbling in his cheap shoes, toward the pier. 

I’d been trailing him for hours. He seemed to know it, but what he didn’t know how was how to lose me. He made a sloppy attempt in Lowtown—ducked around a clothing stall for all of a minute, thought he could hide behind a few scarves—but I had eyes on him the whole time. I tracked him to the docks, where dead fish were spoiling on the pier, and this kid was bent on joining them. 

He was a on a mission for the Templars. I had a tip from one of my good sources. Not great, not lousy—just good. She said it was no delivery, just a set-up, that he was a pawn no one cared if they lost. She didn’t say more. 

I’m not in the business of saving lives. I suppose I never was. But I am in the business of knowing things. And I needed to know why. 

When the kid rounded a corner and rushed to the dock, breathless, he found it empty. No one to take the book. 

I watched him, crouched behind a salt barrel. Fear closed around him, cold as an armored fist. What I already knew was becoming clear to him. Maybe I could get something out of him, if he felt betrayed. I took a chance.

I stepped closer, out of the shadow and onto the sun-blistered pier, hands up and empty. “Hey, kid.” He turned to me, his blue eyes nearly out of his head, sweaty and wrung out like a short-order cook’s hat. “Put the book down.” 

“No.” His voice was harsher, deeper than I expected. He gripped the book harder with his scrawny arms. “This is what I am meant to do.” I saw the tattoo on his neck, the chain of Servani. He was a slave, or used to be. 

The book began to glow and shiver. His face contorted, maybe with pain, or maybe he knew more about all this than I did, and readied himself for the shock.

Then the book faded away, and something shimmered around him like the air during Darktown summer: hot, thick, uneasy. He thrust his chest forward with a anguished grunt, and a crack broke the shimmer. 

Part of me wanted to stop it, whatever it was, but my Templar skills were rustier than old lawn furniture. It was too late, anyway. Blood seeped from between his ribs, dripped onto the dry wood at his feet, and he fell onto his bony knees. 

It was pointless, but I went to him.

“Kid, stay alive for a minute, if you can.” I didn’t think he could. I held him as thick blood and mumbled verses of the Chant spilled from his mouth. “What were you carrying?”

His eyes marbled and rolled back into his head. “The keys the Choir of Silence would need,” he whispered, then coughed, and his blood spattered and soaked my jacket. “Beauty’s High Priest demanded more.” He choked on his own blood. 

Dissonant verses, apocrypha. The Canticle of Silence. 

Then his head fell back onto the dock with a wet thud. A skinny little elf, couldn’t have been more than 18. 

I left him there to rot with the fish. As I walked away, a hunched old man in tattered rags rifled through his pockets. 

So there I was, covered in some kid’s blood, knowing no more than when I’d started, with a long walk back to my office ahead of me. 

It wasn’t the first time. Which was probably why I liked to drink.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning a series... more to come. Lots more characters, fun twists and turns, many surprises. First bit starring Private Detective Rylen is here: [Addenda slip.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848084)


End file.
